The liars chair by Rebecca whitney

  Well this was a book club choice but I very much looked forward to reading it. Sadly I was disappointed. The story was a struggle to get through. The characters not that likeable. I found myself not really caring what happened to them. I think the main character was so Unlikeable throughout the majority of the book that by the time you reached the end and a bit of her story was revealed to show perhaps why she was as she was you really didn’t care enough. The story starts well, with Rachel running someone over after drink driving but the controlling element between her and her husband just didn’t grip me and the ending was also disappointing. I would have to give this 1 out of 5. Shame as it had a promising start!  

 

FitBit Challenge

  
Well it seems I have joined the Fitbit revolution! Having tried for nearly 20 years to lose weight and tried every conceivable diet from Cambridge to weight watchers from lighter life to slimming world I have decided it’s time to concentrate on getting fit instead!! So I bought myself a Fitbit charge HR and both my daughters have as well so it seems the challenge is on!! And I have to say FitBits make you do the weirdest of things!

  
Today’s challenge was won by me lol 🙂 I have no idea how I managed it but it’s the first time I have ever done anywhere near 13,000 steps. I will keep you posted on my progress 🙂

Take care

Bridget (the new soon to be skinnier version!)

Tiny Beautiful Things

I love reading but barely get the time to read, or maybe I just don’t make enough time.

So far I have only read one book this year, but what a book that was! From the author Cheryl Strayed who wrote Wild, comes Tiny Beautiful Things. It is a collection of letters sent into an agony aunt column followed by Cheryl’s forthright and nurturing responses. Its almost like having your own mother reply to you at times, and giving you it how it is.

It’s one of those books, I wish had never left my book shelf, but I passed it to my daughter and then bought another copy for my other daughter and a copy for my friend! I’m sure it will find its way back to me one day, but I would most definitely recommending buying a copy.

So I have vowed to myself that I am going to read more, two books a year doesn’t seem that great to me.  My eldest daughter (24) is also a keen reader and so I suggested to her that we start up a Mother and Daughter book club! She was thrilled with the idea, so we have chosen a book and then intend to meet up a month from now, have dinner and share a bottle of wine and discuss the book that we have chosen. If any of you fancy reading along with us and leaving your comments feel free to do so! The book in question is The Sudden Departure of the Frasers which looks an interesting read, I’m just awaiting my copy which should be with me by Wednesday. As luck would have it I’m then off to the Highlands of Scotland for a week, so will have the perfect opportunity to read it!! 🙂

I’ll be reporting more in my next post. 😉

Take care

 

Bridget

Change

It has been some time since I have written. My life has changed quite dramatically. I have moved house, met a wonderful man and we are now living together! Life is good. 🙂

I haven’t done any writing over the past 12 months, I took a complete break but I’ve just signed up for A363 and I’m quite excited to be starting again! I’ve just ordered a copy of Back to Creative Writing School from Amazon which looks an interesting read.

A week from now I’m off to Sunny Scotland for the week and I intend on chilling out and getting those creative juices flowing again! 🙂

Can’t wait for my OU Box to arrive! 🙂

Take care

Bridget

Do you watch the news?

About a year ago, I stopped watching mainstream news, I stopped reading a newspaper and I switched off from the world at large and I haven’t looked back.  I was in a difficult place emotionally a year ago and probably had far too much other stuff to deal with and maybe my decision to stop watching the news was borne from that, I just couldn’t deal with anything else negative in my life.

Which is an interesting point, because actually a lot of the mainstream news is negative. Now that I’m feeling more emotionally whole, I have been pondering whether I should let mainstream news back into my life? I have to say it wouldn’t be because I want to, but a friend of mine mentioned that when you are depressed you can shut out the news of the world around you and I know that I’m no longer in that place.

After a quick google, I found an interesting article which reaffirmed my decision to shut the news out of my life – http://open.bufferapp.com/mainstream-news/ – it also makes a good point about surrounding yourself with positive people, people that reaffirm the good things about you and people that you can rely on. This has been a major game changer for me of late.

I now feel happier and better than I have in a long time, and that is without a doubt influenced by the people in my life.

So as part of my continued Self Discovery I’m just about to sign up for the Sacred alone course run by Susannah Conway http://www.susannahconway.com/the-sacred-alone-registration/ – I have read lots of good reviews about it and found her website inspiring. So any of you who wish to join me, please click the link and register now 🙂

Have a great day.

Take care

 

Bridget

x

Journey

I haven’t written in a long time, life got in the way I guess. But going back on my last post I feel that my perception has changed completely. After 3 months of counselling and dealing with something from my past, I am now in a much better place. I can’t believe I wrote back then that I only felt I deserved 10%, now I not only believe I deserve 100% but I also wouldn’t accept anything less.

My self esteem seems to have finally kicked in at the ripe old age of 42.

I’m currently dating and just enjoying myself really. I am not in a rush to find a partner, in fact quite the opposite for the first time ever I felt quite okay with being single.

I have good friends around me and feel happy with where I am at. 🙂

So to anyone else out there struggling, my only advice would be get some help, talk to someone, it really can make a massive difference and quite often low self esteem comes from our childhood. So tackling it head on sometimes is the only way.

Take care

Bridget

We accept the love we feel we deserve

I always find it interesting how certain things just resonate. I watched the perks of being a wallflower tonight. Slightly slow start but good finish. There was a line which is the theme of the movie – We accept the love we think we deserve – and that one line hooked me.

What I fail to understand though is for those of us that have this in built belief that we only deserve a small fraction of love, how do we change that inner belief.

I have been struggling with this myself these past few years. I imagine the amount of love I currently feel I deserve and I have to say I would imagine it to be around 10%, which is pretty low. The question is how do I get that to 100% so that my next relationship is fulfilling.

Well someone recently enlightened me that the reason I can’t change the belief and the percentage of love I feel I deserve is because I never allow myself to see through the ending of any relationship for any length of time before embarking on the next one.

Kind of similar to Katie Price, I don’t grieve, because the pain of heartbreak is too much to bear for any length of time so I prefer to box up the pain, close the lid and move on quickly, rather than wallow. The problem there though is you end up with lots of little boxes full of pain that you never deal with.

Apparently going through the stages of heartbreak is what makes us change. It’s what makes us stop ending up in the same continuing cycle of bad relationship after bad relationship and it helps our belief percentage rise as we take back control of our life.

So this time I intend to see it through. I read in a relationship book that it takes 6 months of healing for every year that you were with the person you loved to truly “get over” the relationship and heal from it.

This is supposed to allow you the proper amount of time to grieve the relationship, contemplate what you learned from it, and move on to a healthier relationship.

So it looks like I have 15 months of single life ahead of me. A time to grow and this time finally heal the wounds and feel the pain properly. I have been told twice in the past month that I need to find myself, so let the journey begin.

Attachment

Since doing my psychology courses, I’m now so much more aware of attachment and I feel this will feature quite heavily in my writing, because often people just look at where someone is in their life, they judge them on their actions and they don’t really look behind those actions.

Anger comes from hurt and hurt comes from fear, it isn’t always that simple I know, there is always the nature vs nurture argument, but the difference between a secure attachment when we are growing up and an insecure attachment can have such an impact on our lives. What we generally learn about love, we learn from our parents, our caregivers or whoever it is that is close to us when we are growing up. That is why history ‘repeats’ itself so much because our learned behaviour just continues the cycle.

However you can break the cycle, you can explore where things are going wrong and the only way you can do that is to take time out for you and really discover who you are as a person and really challenge those preconceived ideas you have had since you were a young child.  I have often heard myself say over the last few years that ‘I like controlling men’, do I? My step father was controlling and I seem to end up in relationships with controlling men, but do I actually like controlling men? I’m now challenging that opinion that I have had for many years, because what I think I actually like is a man who knows what he wants, a decisive man, someone who is driven and intellectual, not controlling and there in lies the difference.

I challenge myself because if I liked controlling men, then why is it that when I finally leave them, I feel so free and all I want to do…. is dance….

Dance like nobody’s watching
Love like you’ve never been hurt
Sing like nobody’s listening
Live like it’s heaven on earth

Just being aware of what we have become ‘conditioned’ to and what we actually want is so important.

Take care
Bridget

xx

My Best Friend Everybody…

I wanted to share this photograph with you today, it very much depicts me and my best friend, we have been friends since school and even though we only see each other maybe once a year, our friendship has seen us through the majority of our lives and is irreplaceable, we have shared so much and stood the test of time together. I really don’t know how I would get through without her sometimes.

I read an interesting article this evening on how to attract the right type of man, and can now see where I’m going wrong! Apparently there are three golden rules:

* Never give a man more than he gives you.
* Never give away your exclusivity if he hasn’t yet committed.
* Never make him dinner or pay for dates.

Well I can safely say that in the past, I have failed on all three of those. So I shall be taking these words of wisdom with me on my journey.

I do think its important to make a man work to get you, after all you are amazing, and he should see that, it doesn’t hurt to let him know, if he eventually snares you, how lucky he is. 🙂

Night Night

Bridget
x

Endings…

I cannot remember the last time I had such a lovely, chilled out day. I woke up late this morning, and then read through some blogs and my tutor forums for my creative writing course. After lunch I popped to Asda and spent some time perusing notebooks and acquired two new ones. 🙂 A girl can never have too many and this evening I have just chilled out with my girls, watching Tom and Jerry followed by Peppa Pig with the curtains drawn, covers on us and the coal effect fire lighting up the room. It was magical.

To finish my evening with a freewrite and a blog is just perfect. 🙂 Writing really is good for the soul…. here is my freewrite for today:

Endings
Endings were all too familiar, something she avoided like the plague. Yet she loved change, thrived on it in her working life, but not in relationships.  Endings stirred up too many memories, all of the men in her life that had meant anything to her had left her in one way or the other and so now, when faced with an ending, it scared her. All she wanted was her happily ever after and all she got was endings. Maybe if she put more thought and attention into the beginnings of her next relationship, without rushing head long into it, maybe then the ending would not be so inevitable.

Beginnings

She loved beginnings, starting a new course with freshly unopened study books, all that new learning ahead. Nice clean notepads at the ready. The beginnings of a book, ready with anticipation for what is to come. The holiday, oh how she loved the beginnings of those, getting ready to take off to pastures new, a whole week of relaxing and adventure ahead. The weekend, the beginning of the weekend was the highlight of her week, a time to chill and spend time out with her girls. The relationship, you couldn’t beat the beginnings of new relationships, feeling 16 again, holding hands, getting to know each other, first kiss, yes she definately preferred beginnings.

Take care

Bridget
x